I saw Atlantis: Milo’s Return a while ago. It wasn’t that good as a movie, but you could tell that it would have made a great television series.
Disney cancelled the Team Atlantis television show, because Atlantis did not do as well as they would have liked at the box office. Atlantis: Milo’s Return is made up of three of the episodes that were near completion before the series ended. The animators added in additional animation and storylines to try to tie the three stories together. Unfortunately, it didn’t fare so well. As a movie, the story seems rushed, as the characters are trying to solve disasters that are supposedly caused by Atlantean machines but there is no explanation as to why the characters go from one place to the other. The finale also seems tacked on, as the three stories that are presented show no reason why the team would decide that the Atlantean machines are no longer a threat to the outside world.
However, if you watch them in context, and realize that this movie was not one of Disney’s many cash-grabbing sequels to their movies, but rather three episodes of a television show that no one outside of Disney will ever watch, Atlantis: Milo’s Return is actually worth a watch. It’s too bad that the show will never see the light of day outside of this movie, as some of the other episodes that were planned sound great.
I’m a huge fan of Disney’s Gargoyles, and Greg Weisman, the creator of Gargoyles worked on Team Atlantis. One of the episodes that never was animated, but for which voice acting was produced was to feature Demona from Gargoyles and a Gargoyle hunter. I love crossovers when they are done right, and since these two shows dabbled in ancient folklore, it seems like they would have been a perfect fit.
We’ll likely never see any more of Team Atlantis though, and that’s a shame. The Gargoyles convention does feature the voice recording of the afforementioned Gargoyles-crossover episode though. I would love to get a chance to hear that.
